


The Last Time

by Sylaise



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: ALL THE ANGST, Angst, Elevator Sex, Escapism, Established Relationship, F/M, Goodbyes, It's probably too long, POV Alternating, Semi-Public Sex, Smut, because I couldn't bring myself to end it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-29
Updated: 2016-01-02
Packaged: 2018-03-20 04:22:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3636576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sylaise/pseuds/Sylaise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The things she had told him, the parts of herself she had let him see, he had accepted as gifts, and repaid her with the knowledge that she wasn't alone. Repaid her with words and laughter, dry red wine and stories. The most beautiful stories.</p><p>---------</p><p>Thane and Shepard share a day together, each knowing it will probably be the last.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The main elevator of Huerta Memorial Hospital was full of death.

It was in the eyes of the two salarian Doctors, silently scrolling through notes on their omni-tools and data pads. It coated the plastic sheet of the empty stretcher that was being brought up from the morgue, back to collect another corpse from one of the rooms, and then back down. And on and on.

Mariah Shepard wondered if the blond-haired, shiny-eyed human realized he was this century’s embodiment of Charon, Ferryman of the River Styx.

She wondered if Thane knew that story.

This was the last time she was going to see him. The last time. She was going to see him.

Over and over and over again the words hummed through her mind, with such frequency they had become a scrolling billboard, a mantra she whispered like a prayer turned on its head. 

She was willing herself to be convinced of it, mostly because it was probably true, though a small part of her still clung to the hope that if she persuaded herself to prepare for the worst, science, the Universe, life, would surprise her and there would be some new treatment for Kepral's Syndrome developed in the next...what...month? Six months? 

It was stupid, of course. Thane was going to die. She knew it. He knew it.

That first time she had let her fingertips brush his at the Normany's mess table, she had known, and giant red warning signs had flashed in front of her eyes.

She had known on the first night Thane had spent in her room, her legs draped over his while they sat on the couch, each cautiously chipping away at the other's shell, trying to find a way inside without snagging on half-healed wounds The watch she wore that was set to the time in Vancouver--a sentiment she allowed herself only because her father had been born and buried there--had beeped 4:30am when both of them had laid their heads back against the soft leather, voices hoarse and eyes stinging but determined to keep the night alive. She had raised her hand and run a single finger across the valley that broke his lower lip. His black eyes had flickered, his breath catching as he raised his own hand to push a strand of her dark hair back behind her ear. By then, she had been screaming at herself to push his hand away and pull hers back and act like it had all been a huge mistake, because it was. Yet, she hadn't been able to bring herself to draw away from his warmth, because nothing had ever seemed less like a mistake.

She didn't need his perfect memory to replay the feeling of his hands running up the sides of her bare torso, the tiny scales of his palms like the finest-grit sand paper. The way he'd soothed the flush they'd left behind with his tongue. Every moment of every night they had shared--there had only been a handful--would be cloaked and ready to slice into her at a moments' notice for years to come. Long after he was gone.

She let out a bitter laugh, making the two Salarian doctors standing in front of her jump. The elevator had landed on the Intensive care floor, and the orderly stepped out, taking his aluminum and vinyl ferry boat with him. The two doctors followed.

_And behind this door, ladies and gentlemen, former lover number one is recovering from being throttled by a demented AI while trying to stop it from killing you._

Kaidan. 

Images of his body, bent and broken as a doll that had been run over by a tank mingled with the stills of Thane's face that had drifted into her head moments before, strained with the effort of holding back his climax so that she might get there before him. Guilt coursed through her like a swift poison.  

The elevator door closed again, leaving her, mercifully, alone. She jammed her fist against the stop button and leaned her back against the cold metal door.  

"You're a fucking idiot," she whispered to herself as she ran both hands through her hair, newly cropped to shoulder length after she had been stripped of her command a few months before.  

She had given very little time to feeling guilty about Thane in relation to Kaidan. The worlds they inhabited were separate places.

She had loved Kaidan. Truly. Trusted him and been trusted by him. She could rail and scream and drink and act like he had been solely to blame for how things had ended between them, but now--especially now--she saw herself as he had seen her that day on Horizon; a failed Spectre, working off a life-debt to a known terrorist organization. Trying to levy enough favor among a bunch of suicidal contract killers to keep them from abandoning a completely hopeless mission. 

That wasn't entirely fair. Most people were lucky if they had one person they trusted to stand behind them holding guns. She had twelve.

There was little doubt, however, that she was up to her elbows in blood, and that her soldier's heart, always so straightforward, had been overtaken by her political head, ever rationalizing and justifying. Like her cannibalized body, her mind and soul felt like a raw patchwork being pieced together as she went, sometimes taking care to be faithful to the original subjects, other times pulling pieces from the darkest void and jamming them into place.  

And Thane had taken her anyway. The things she had told him, the parts of herself she had let him see, he had accepted as gifts, and repaid her with the knowledge that she wasn't alone. Repaid her with words and laughter, dry red wine and stories. The most beautiful stories.

Kaidan had lashed out, judging, assuming, his image of her shattered, unable to make sense of the pieces.

She brought the heels of her palms to her eyes. Was she seriously comparing the two of them now?  _Now?_ When the universe was minutes away from total obliteration and there were approximately forty seven thousand other things that were more important than The Life, Angst and Bad Romance of Mariah Shepard? 

She supposed this was as good a time as any. They were both here, after all.  

"You're a fucking idiot," she repeated to the silent elevator.  Realizing she had been holding up a hospital elevator for two full minutes, she raised her hand to the control panel. 

_So. Which one are you going to see first? The one you let be smashed practically to death? Or the one who stopped accepting his impending death because of you?_

Thane had made her fear death in a way nothing else ever had. Like any soldier, she had accepted that her death would come long before the slow nighttime drift-away at a hundred and twenty that most civilians coveted. She had accepted her death, and Kaidan's, even after they had become involved. Fighting Saren, standing between a Reaper and the Citadel, she had barely blinked at the idea that her remaining heartbeats could be counted on two hands.

Curled up in her bed with Thane's body wrapped around hers, however, she had wept, silently, and fearfully as a child. It wasn't fair that  _this_  had happened when death peered in from every window.

"Jesus Christ," she said, and punched the “up” button for the inpatient lounge. She didn't know if it was the right choice. Or if there was a right choice. All she knew was that she'd spent enough time in her own company for the time-being. She was done trying to explain things to herself, to Kaidan, Anderson, and Council and she was done feeling guilty. This was the last time she was going to see him.  She was going to see him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The original version of this story accidentally got deleted. It was irritating, but I'm glad it happened because I got to make some changes and retitle it to fit with how the story was progressing. 
> 
> Thanks for reading <3
> 
> P.S. Kaidan fans be warned: I have the Kaidan/Shep tag on here because of the past relationship, but this particular fic is all Thane time. I'm sure I'll be writing some Kaidan time eventually. My Shep's indecision mirrors my own very closely.


	2. Chapter 2

She'd spent the remainder of her time in the elevator trying to decide what she would say to him.

She'd gotten about as far as "hello."

It was just...what did you even say? No amount of time in the universe was enough for all the things she wanted to say to him, to share, to see. How did you trim all of that down to an exchange that would last minutes, hours, if they were lucky?

As she stepped out of the elevator, her eyes scanned the lounge and found him almost immediately. He was standing on the viewing deck that overlooked the hospital courtyard. He was moving through some kind of exercise. Fighting stances, it looked like, all grace and flex and lightning-fast strikes with hands and feet. She stood and watched him for a few moments. The light from the huge window illuminated his face, topaz and emerald and pink sapphire, set with drops of onyx.

The joy that spread through her at seeing him still able to move so effortlessly was like a drug. When she's read 'lounge' in his message, she hadn't been sure if that meant a place where patients moved around freely or if it was somewhere they were wheeled to by nurses.

She'd been prepared for the latter, she'd told herself. And Garrus, who had spent the entirety of their breakfast together worrying over her. "He won't be like you remember him, Shepard," he'd said as she'd thrown back the dregs of her coffee and stood.

"Don't you have a planet to save?" she'd snapped, and instantly felt awful. The mandibles around Garrus’ mouth had flared, and she looked down at the cup still clutched in her hand, biting the tip of her tongue. He was just trying to protect her from more hurt. "I'll be fine, Garrus. Really."

But she wouldn't have been. Not if Thane had been in a rolling hospital bed surrounded by tubes and machines.

She walked slowly towards him, a few people stopping what they were doing to watch her. She knew they recognized her. She wondered how much of her love life was public knowledge.

When Thane’s body had fallen into a rest stance, she reached out to touch his shoulder. He turned before her fingers found the smooth leather of his coat. Of course he had known she was there. "Siha," he said, and he was hard to read, but she thought she sensed relief in his voice. "I heard Earth was under attack. I didn't know you'd made it out."

She really, _really_ , needed to learn to call people. "I..." she started. What. Was she sorry? Happy? Relieved? "It's been too long."

She cringed at how pointless the words were. "I was beginning to think I'd never see you again," she continued, and hoped the tremor she heard in her own voice let him know how true it was.

She reached out and gripped his hands, feeling the tiny muscles tense under her touch. He squeezed her fingers, and let out a slow breath. She wasn't sure if the waiver in it was due illness or emotion.

"I sent a few messages while you were incarcerated. But I suspect they never got past the guards."

Something was wrong. Well, something other than Reapers and deadly respiratory conditions. He was too on guard, too tepid, far too formal for what this reunion should have been. She had only received one message from Thane--literally minutes after Kaiden's had come through--but he'd mentioned others in his last one. "What are you doing here?" he asked. 

"I came to visit a friend..." she hesitated, "Kaidan. He got hurt protecting me."

"Ah," Thane said, stepping back from her and turning to look out the window, hands held behind his back. "The human biotic in intensive care?"

His words were broken by a brief cough and her stomach clenched. This was not the conversation she wanted to have right now. She hadn’t even thought it needed to be a conversation. She'd told him about Kaidan. Told him a lot actually, as he had told her about Irikah. There was little point in pretending there hadn't been others before.

She raised her eyebrows, and he continued "I saw the marks of an implant. We have spoken...he was holding out hope that a woman would visit him."

Since receiving their messages, she’d wondered a few times if they would run into each other. Part of her wanted to probe further, to get some idea of how the encounter had played out. There was an edge to Thane’s voice that was unlike him. She wasn't sure it was jealousy, but it was something close to it. She supposed she couldn't blame him. It was one thing to listen to a lover's memories of another, quite a different story to be faced with flesh and bone reality.

Something in her face must have touched him, because he untangled some of the barbs in his tone when he next spoke. "Is there something I should know about you two?"

"We were together for awhile before the original Normandy was destroyed," and it felt like a recitation. He knew this. His cagey approach to this subject was making her think some big revelation had come about. She'd turned away, not wanting him to see her cheeks burning.

"And grew apart, I gather," he continued.

She turned and looked at him helplessly. Two years and a Reaper invasion apart. She frantically went back in her mind to their past conversations about Kaidan. She was certain she had made it clear their relationship had met a very angry, very distinct end. Sure, she was a little confused about the whole thing now that she was forced to reconcile the two chapters in her life because now both men were in her world at the same time, but...Jesus, what had Kaidan said to him about her?

He stared into her eyes a second longer, searching, and then blinked. His shoulders relaxed perceptibly, and he brought his hands down to his sides. He didn't apologize, but she had spent enough time with him to recognize the cues. Drell communication, body language and vocal timbre were much more subtle than humans’, and she had spent a good deal of time flummoxed by what she had read as cryptic half-answers to concrete questions while to him, the meanings had been clear as day.

"Your enemies might try to finish him off here," Thane said, taking a cautious step to begin closing the gap between them. "I will look out for him."

She closed the gap between them further, placing a very careful hand on his upper arm. "I appreciate it."

He made a motion to shrug off the touch, but seemed to think better of it. "I'm near the end of my life. Is is a good time to be generous. I have only a few loves left, and you are my last. Let me do what I can--"

She moved in and closed his mouth with her own, giving little heed to the dozen or so people around them. She'd had enough cautious side-stepping. She needed him to understand that he had her. All of her. She pressed her body to his, and and she felt the heat--his delicious heat--seeping through her.

He seemed taken off guard for only a second, before he reached up to put a hand to her cheek, tilting her head up and coaxing her mouth open. She inhaled slowly, drinking in the scent of his skin, and she felt him do the same. She traced his lips with her tongue, lingering on that little valley in the center of the lower one. She pressed the tip of her tongue against it and felt a tiny shiver run through him.

She opened her eyes, and found him watching her as she kissed him, those endless pools (re)memorizing every eyelash, every pore. Surprised at being watched, she pulled her head back, and he smiled down at her. "I see you want to make up for lost time?"

Here he was. Her Thane.

Whatever barrier had been thrown up between them had been breached. She could have wept at the relief she felt now that she had him here, feeling him against her, the taste of him still on her tongue.

In another life, this conversation would have had to continue. She would have asked him about what Kaidan had said, and she would have had to explain. These were the things you talked about when you had a lifetime of breaths and heartbeats to throw away.

Now, though. Now they had to ration the moments, and use them with care.

She ran a finger along the edge of the frill on the side of his face. They both laughed softly, pressing their foreheads together. She didn’t need to say it, and neither did he. She brought her mouth to his again, catching his bottom lip between her teeth.

So little time left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have such a love-hate relationship with this conversation. Firstly, this is time number two where Shepard has been like "oh, hey man, how've you been?" to a man who has been thinking she might be dead (time number 1 being Kaidan on Horizon). Obviously, Thane takes it better than Kaidan. 
> 
> Secondly, in ME2, Thane goes on and and on about his dead wife, and I find it really hard to believe that Kaidan wouldn't have come up at all. So I always interpreted this as Thane actually having been kind of shaken at meeting Kaidan, and lashing out just a bit at Shepard for not letting him know she was alive. He doesn't strike me as the jealous type, really, but yeah...finding out that the woman you love is alive from her former lover? Who has seen her a lot more recently than you have? Who still cares about her enough to throw himself in front of a mad cyborg to protect her? I'd be a bit put out too.


	3. Chapter 3

When he felt her teeth on his lip, Thane heard the song of desire pouring out from his throat before he could stop it. 

She wouldn’t be able to hear it as more than a quiet hiss. Among Drell, it was a most vulnerable song. He’d described it to Shepard as laying oneself bare before another, at once surrendering and worshiping. He felt a warm bubble of laughter form in his chest as he recalled her eyebrows knitted in concentration trying to make sense of the bioacoustics of the Drell language. 

It was everything he could manage not to simply devour her, to lay her down here on the floor of the hospital lounge and take her. Take everything from her, and give her everything he had left to give in return. He'd spent the past months aching for her, cursing his damned memory, because it made it impossible for him to forget the feel of her skin, yielding and pliant beneath his hands, so unlike anything he'd ever felt. He'd wanted to forget the way her long hair had brushed his thighs as she'd sat astride him, her head thrown back, face flushed and fingernails denting his chest. Never had he wanted to forget the sound of a laugh, or the taste of a tongue more than he wanted to forget hers. 

He pulled back from her mouth, pushing her newly short hair back behind her ear with his fingers. "I should warn you. You may not want your last memories of me to be in this hospital. Kepral's Syndrome is...not kind." 

In all honesty, he was just as much worried about his own last memories of her. What time could they steal here that would not reek of sickness, not be dogged by the doomsday clock that had chased him for years that only recently he had become so fearful of. 

"Then let's go somewhere. I think I can spare a few moments," she kissed his throat and he smiled.

Her last memory of him would be here, he knew, now matter how much pretending they did in the immediate present. He wondered what his last vision of her face would be.

In that moment, he was grateful that he was the one dying this time. It was selfish, he knew but...a life spent with perfect memories of another you held so close to your heart, unable to see to touch or feel or taste again...well, he had done that before. Was still doing it, in a way. His memories of Irikah were still with him, as vivid as they'd ever been, but it had been so long that he had been able to accept them as a celebration of her life, rather than an endless mourning of her death, as all Drell learned to do very quickly, lest they be swallowed by despair with every loss. 

Ironically, Shepard had been a large part of why this basic truth of Drell philosophy had become so difficult for him. She had made him fear the death he had once accepted. She and Kolyat. It was because of her that he had his son back. She had made him long for more time. Made him long to forget. Her memories, at least, would fade. If she survived this war, which she probably wouldn't. He shook himself. Both of them were still standing, for the time being, and he would be damned if they didn't draw every last bit of life out of these last moments as possible. 

He held her to him, running his fingers along her shoulder-blades through her fatigues, wishing he could trace the scar he knew was there. "I'd like that," he whispered into her neck. He touched his tongue to her skin and she sighed. The taste of amber soap came back in his mouth. "But you should understand that my cardiovascular system is not as it once--"

Her lips were on his again, and he was ready for her this time. His hands moved up to her hair, tangling in the strands and encasing the back of her skull. He sung his desire into her mouth again, and he felt her smiling under his lips. He brought his hands down her back stopping just above the swell of her buttocks and pressed her hips into his. 

She was making an excellent show of touching him like he wasn’t on the brink of death, but he needed to show her that he was still himself. He had behaved badly and he knew it. Thank the Gods she’d only picked up on a tiny bit of the bitterness he’d felt toward the human who was so clearly still in love with her. It was not the typical jealousy of a protective lover, but an envy so potent he’d almost been able to smell it coming off himself. This man had had so much more time with her. 

Time. So little. He shook image of the man’s face out of his head as he tasted her. It was foolish to dwell on such things. He stroked her tongue with his, bruising the fragile skin of her lips with his, he was certain. 

"You were saying something?" she asked, pulling away and raising an eyebrow. 

He rested his forehead against hers again, forcing himself to keep his breaths even. If he kept his breathing measured, he could almost ignore the bites of pain that came with each inhalation. "I've missed you, Shepard. ‘Riah."

She moved back in for another kiss, but he held a finger up to her lips. "People have begun to stare." 

She looked around quickly, shrugging, but stepping back all the same. "Do you have a room?" she asked. 

"Yes. But we...I don't want to go there. Not with you." 

The thought of his warrior angel, fierce and bright and full of life in his cell of a hospital room was...no...that was his own hell and he alone needed to navigate it. 

She looked down, picking at her lip, obviously trying to think. 

“I know somewhere,” he said softly, but then stopped. 

The apartment he’d rented in the lower wards had been the closest thing in the last ten years he’d had to a home. A place to sit down to meals with Kolyat, to share old memories and make new ones. They had been neither grand, nor perfect, but they were more than he deserved with a son who was more than he deserved.

And still, he had yearned to be back aboard the Normandy. For even when he and Kolyat had walked the streets of the wards, late into the night discussing all manner of things large and small, he returned to an empty apartment, the lights shining from the windows mocking him as he’d walked up to the building, daring him to wish they were on, not because of a faulty timer, but because she was there, waiting for him. 

He’d once told her that he’d preferred spending lonely nights with the memories of another to nothing, but as the weeks passed, drifting into months, the memories of her began to warp themselves into dreams. Dreams of a future with her that would never come, but which became so real and so vivid to him that they came almost as flawlessly as his memories. Almost. 

He’d already let go of the place in his mind. Let go of the few possessions he’d collected. But the memories of Kolyat...

He took one of her hands and brought her knuckles to his mouth. He breathed on them, studying her face. He knew if they went back there, there was a good chance he might be totally consumed by the fathoms-deep despair that constantly threatened to overwhelm him as he treaded furiously in the wake, trying to keep his head above the surface. He didn’t want her to see him like that. But he knew her. He had seen her raw, shredded, full of nameless rage as she’d clawed her way back to herself during their time together on the Normandy. He had to trust that she was willing to see him equally broken. 

“Come with me,” he said as he brought her hand down, and she made a motion to lace her fingers with his, laughing as her fingers met the resistance of his two fused middle ones. 

As she would have with her human...stop. No time. 

He smiled in spite of his sullen thought, and started leading her toward the elevator.


	4. Chapter 4

“Where are we going? She asked as they reached the block of elevators.

He didn’t answer her, but pushed the button that would summon the compartment.

He still hadn’t fully committed to the idea of bringing her back to his old apartment, but he needed to get her away from this place. Needed to get himself away from this place. He wanted a somewhere where no one else could find them, real or remembered. A space occupied by them and them alone. Besides, time was precious, and he refused to waste these moments with her while he paced and wrung his hands trying to make a decision. 

He looked across the to the other elevators. If he had he the right one...

The door opened, and it was empty. He stepped inside and she followed, hand still in his.

“Thane?” she asked again, and started to raise her other hand to push a button on the control panel. He caught it and pulled her to him, hands slipping around her wrists, and he felt his fingers sink into the delicate flesh as she reflexively tried to pull away. He held her there for a few seconds, watching her face as he waited for the doors to close on their own. She looked baffled for a few breaths before the realization crept over her features. “Are you insane?” she whispered, but he could already smell the arousal starting to seep out of her.

He pressed his lips to her forehead, the scent of whatever she used to wash her hair filling his nostrils. Almond and something, he thought.

He spun her around, so her back was pressed against his chest. She gasped as he wrapped one arm around her waist and pressed his pelvis into her. His other hand rounded her and cupped her breast, pinching through the layers of fabric. The little cry that escaped her let him know he’d hit the right place.

“Seriously, are you ins--”

“Shhh...See the buttons on the panel?"

She nodded, gasping again as he flicked his tongue against her earlobe. “Only the buttons for this floor and the very top floor are illuminated, which means those are the only two floors this elevator will stop at. The top is a storage area for excess equipment. Stretchers, IV stands and the like.”

“Okay,” she said, and he shushed her again, this time with teeth to the place right under the earlobe.

“The only people with any need to go up there are hospital staff. And there are no other ways up. No one has gone in or come out of this elevator for some time.”

“So...” Another squeeze to her breast, then another, drawing little sighs out of her with each application of pressure. 

“So, we go up, wait for the doors to close and have plenty of warning if someone summons it again.”

She laughed softly, and the feel of it against his chest warmed him. He smiled into her neck as she reached for the button that would take them up.

It was true that this mad attempt at sex in an elevator was a delaying tactic for having to make a decision about how they would spend their true final hours together, but having her here, her body in his hands, her skin under his tongue, his ears full of the sounds--Gods, those sounds--she so readily offered...he needed her. He needed her begging and shuddering and crying out his name as he claimed her. In his own language, he whispered in her ear how he would take her, how he would fill her, brand her with his fingers and teeth, flood her to the brim as she broke beneath him. How she would never be able to be with another man without thinking of him.

In the same breath he begged her forgiveness. 

She turned, of course not knowing what he had said, but her eyes were lit with a fire he had waited long, so long, to see again. Even though she had not understood the words, she'd sensed the bitter shadow that soaked them. And she was panting, the want flowing off her in heady waves. His eyes dropped, and he was ashamed. Ashamed of his pride, his arrogance, his selfish desires.

He felt her finger under his chin, lifting his eyes back up to hers. “No time for that,” she whispered.

He was on her faster than he thought his failing body could have ever carried him. His warrior angel. His ferocious protector, guarding him from all harm, even when it came from within himself. He did not deserve such a woman. Mouth crushing hers, he slammed her back into the metal wall of the elevator, lifting her legs to lock around his waist.

As he did, he felt the elevator scrape to a halt. They froze, neither of them breathing as they waited for signs of occupancy in the storage room.

When no voices or footsteps presented themselves, and the doors slid shut again, she wrapped her arms around his neck, laughing into his shoulder in a way that brought him nearly to tears. It was free of care, free of worry, free of anything but the sheer joy and absurdity of what they were doing.

“Short,” he said as he brought his hands up to tangle in her hair again. She made a little sound of agreement and brought her face up from his neck to look at him. “I needed a change,” she said and then cocked her head, a touch of apprehension creeping into her eyes. “You don’t like it.”

He pulled, dragging her head back. A naked cry escaped her mouth and he brought his teeth to the place in her neck where her blood visibly sped through fragile veins. “It’s perfect,” he whispered into her skin before he bit down, enough to leave a mark that he soothed immediately with his tongue.

“Jesus...Thane...”

“Yes?”

She took his face in her hands and kissed him hard in response, running her thumbs along the flaps of cartilage under his frill and he trilled his need into her mouth.

He moved his hips away from her and released her legs, hands moving from her hair down to her stomach, trying to draw her shirt out from where it was tucked into the waistband of her pants. His hands were burning to touch her bare skin.

He turned her around again as his hands met her warmth. He moved them up, exhaling as she shivered, and she braced herself against the wall with her hands. 

He pulled the ridiculous undergarment she wore aside so he could pinch her nipples. He could break her like this. He watched the eyelids of her reflection flutter in the polished metal of the elevator's interior.

Yes, simply with pressure on those peaks of skin and nerve that had fascinated him when he’d first discovered them. Months ago, she had told him some human women could orgasm this way, but she'd never been able to, and he’d smirked and taken up the challenge.

His mind flashed to her lying naked on her bed. He held one of the nerve-filled buds in his mouth and rolled the other between a thumb and forefinger. He alternated biting and pinching as her head thrashed and her fingers dug into the back of his head as she held him to her. One of his legs was draped between hers and he felt her core, drenched and burning against his skin. She gasped, cursing and keening as he bit down a final time. He felt the gush of her fluids.

“Don’t stop,” Her voice brought him back, and he realized he had gone still, lost in the memory.

He dragged his hands back down, and she hissed at their departure. “It will take too long,” he whispered as he ran his fingers down her stomach and found the buttons on her pants.

“Thane...please,"

“Please what, Siha?”

She rolled her hips against his, and he breathed in, too sharply, and had to swallow a grunt of pain. Not now. He would not let any part of this blight overtake him now.

She reached back and pressed her hand against him, feeling how hard he was for her. He caught her wrist and pressed her hand back to the wall. The control he had over himself was stretched so thin, and he needed it to make sure this was about her. He wasn’t certain he could fight back the signs of his illness if he let himself go completely, and he refused to let anything break through the fragile veil that lay over them. The veil that allowed her to be worried whether or not he liked her short hair, rather than the horrific reality of things to come.

He pulled her pants down to just below her buttocks, and she let out a small sound that could have been longing or frustration. He unfastened his own pants with some effort, because his hands were shaking. Gods, could he manage this?

“Thane, for fuck’s sake...” He felt a chuckle in his chest and let it escape. As ever, he marveled at how effortlessly she brought him to laughter. He doubted she would ever know how precious this was to him. He would never be able to tell her this with words she could understand. He needed to show her.

Finally free of his pants, he took a hold of himself with one hand, and brought the other to her core, pressing a finger just inside her folds. She was dripping. He brought his lips to her ear and caught her eyes in the mirrored surface. “For me, Siha?" She let out a sound that could have been a strangled laugh or a curse and nodded. He quirked his mouth up at the unnecessary gesture, eyes not leaving hers in the reflection.

He brought himself to her, dipping the head in, just deeply enough to make her rock back against him.

“Please.” And he saw the word on her lips more than he heard the sound.

Slowly, slowly, he slid into her. She was tight around him, tighter than she had felt the last time they had been together. Unable to think, unable to reason, he whispered “Mine, only mine.”

He caught the scream that escaped her with a quick hand over her mouth and drew himself all the way out before pushing back into her. Another cry into his palm and he put his other hand over her fingers splayed against the wall.

He folded her hand into his so his knuckles pressed into the metal as he drew himself out again and paused, waiting for...yes...she thrust her hips back toward his. He held his hips still as she started moving on him in a frantic rhythm, trying to lead him to that place inside her that she’d brought his fingers to so many times.

She pushed back a little harder, making him step back, so she was bent slightly at the waist, allowing him to go a bit deeper. He watched her eyes grow wide in the reflection.

He felt her teeth against the skin on his palm and thrust forward, unable to help himself. Her hand twitched under his but he held it down, knowing what she was trying to do.

He would have loved to bring her from deep inside, as he'd been able to once before, but realizing that their uninterrupted time in the elevator was most likely coming to an end he relented, and placed his palms flat on the wall on either side of her, holding still as her fingers found their mark between her legs and she let out a sound of relief.

Eyes still closed, he began to move, not quickly, but there was very little about him that was gentle in that moment. To the rhythm of his measured breathing, he crashed into her over and over again as she stroked herself, her cries giving way to a continuous wail before finally fading into gasps.

Every muscle in his body begged for release, and he longed to let himself thrust into her as frantically as she had brought herself against him moments before, but he knew he couldn’t. He bent so he could press is face into the crook of her neck and continued his steady barrage, longing to be rid of all clothing so he could hear the slap of his skin against hers, to trace his fingers and mouth along the tangle of scars on her back as he fucked her. He smiled into the side of her face as the obscene phrase came to his mind, never having felt the need for it before meeting her. 

“God...I’m...now, _now_...come inside me, please...”

Snapping his head up, he searched for her face as she clenched around him. The sight of her scarlet cheeks, her lips, swollen and bruised both from his mouth and her own teeth as she yelled his name so loudly there was no way someone somewhere hadn’t heard...it was all too much.

He shuddered and cried out as he wrenched himself against her, spilling himself deep, deep inside and rasping calls of desperation, exaltation and possesion into her hair.

He sagged against her, his legs unable to hold him up on their own.

They stayed that way for a few seconds, pressed against the wall of the elevator, each lost in their own bliss. She brought her hand back up from between her legs. He caught it and brought her fingers to his mouth, the taste of her intoxicating.

He withdrew from her, and she hissed at movement against her hyper-sensitized skin.

They both jumped and hastily re-buttoned and re-buckled as the elevator jerked into life again. “As always, my siha, you manage to get there in the knick of time.”

Still slightly breathless, she laughed as she turned toward him and he folded her into his arms. “Where did you learn that expression?” she asked against his chest.

He chuckled. “Joker.”

“You’ve been holding out on me, Krios,” she said, the sound of her voice as close as it had ever come to how he imagined it would be where it not weighed down with the folly of the entire universe.

“How many more human cliches have you been secretly understanding?”

“Only a few,” he replied and paused. Yes. He could bring her there. “I’ll share them with you on our way to my apartment.”

In the last moments before the elevator stopped, he whispered a string of adorations into the silence as he rocked her slowly back and forth. Usually, she asked him to translate the things he had said, but this time she didn’t, and he was relieved. They were too real and too melancholy and he wasn’t ready to shatter this fantasy quite yet.


	5. Chapter 5

Mariah Shepard leaned her head back against the seat of the skycar, staring out the window, watching the scampering lights of the traffic milling around the sentinel skyscrapers like insects skimming over water.

They made her think of the little water bugs she'd seen in the pond outside the house her grandfather had lived in on Earth. Her mother had taken her there once, when she was seven or so. It was high summer, and the air had been thick with rain and thunder, and she remembered breathing in the damp...the wet bark of the trees, the bright, mossy wafts floating off the surface of the pond with the cooler air from the storm.

She shifted in her seat, adjusting her legs so the crotch of her pants wasn't laying so much pressure on her still-aching cunt. There was something about that sweet ache and the remembered feel of cool storm air on her face that made her think of old films where people rode through balmy earth-summer nights in cars with no tops, and big rubber wheels, hair flying back, eyes stinging in the wind (even though they weren't going any more than 60km per hour) and totally satisfied from (gracefully implied) sex in the woods or on a beach. It was easy now to understand why the people who made the movies had included that moment in so many of their films.

It was the bittersweet 'time between'. Between the total loss of oneself into another person's hands, lips, teeth and tongue and the next thing. The next thing. Usually a deadly fight or someone getting kidnapped because of the thing the lovers had been trying to run away from.

Getting Thane checked out of the hospital for a few hours had been no harder than finding Dr. Michel and asking her for a favor. Mobile patients were allowed to sign out of the hospital for up to twenty four hours at a time so long as their treatment allowed it, and were very firmly reminded that their ID bracelets had emergency tracking devices that were activated if vitals fell too low or they were out for longer than their time-limit.

"So unless you want the entire fleet of paramedics converging on you, make sure you're back in eleven hours and fifty nine minutes," the Doctor had said with a sad little smile.

She might have owed Shepard about twenty favors for saving her life once a month, but she wasn't stupid. Apart from being good friends with Karin Chakwas, she would, as anyone in the galaxy who read the extranet, have heard about the disgraced Mariah Shepard and her Drell assassin.

Once, this would have bothered her. She thought of the gossip column Liara had linked to her omni-tool with an apologetic "I thought you'd want to see this" a few years ago. A blurry picture of her and Kaidan in a restaurant in the wards, with the caption _**"Hero of the Citatel Breaking Regs With Her Lieutenant?"**_

As angry as she'd been then, it was nothing compared to when she'd showed it to Kaidan, and he'd laughed, and so, for Christ's sake, had _Anderson._

She'd ranted to both of them about how the galaxy was going to hell in a hand basket if they couldn't think of anything more interesting to talk about than her love life and how this wouldn't happen if she was a man and on and on.

But now...it didn't fucking matter very much to her what they thought. And they _thought_ plenty. 

"What are you thinking of?"

"Hm? Oh.." She paused for a moment, thinking of how to put it into words, then laughed a little bit because, really, the little journey her mind had gone on had been pretty absurd.

Their hands were twined together between the seats, and turning to look over at him, she saw that he was resting the back of his head against his seat as well, searching with his eyes, with the blend of amusement and curiosity that had played into her mind from embarrassingly soon after she'd met him. She supposed this was taking the place of the conversations they'd always had after sex, facing each other, learning each other with heads laid on pillows, usually only touching at a single point; fingers, toes, his leg between hers or vice versa. She wondered if she could put that feeling into words for him.

She felt his thumb move along the side of her hand a few times, as though letting him know he was still there. There used to be time for those long pauses. Now...

"I don't know...Wind. Ponds. Thunderstorms."

He 'hmed' in response, as though he were carefully considering what she'd said. "Earth things," he said finally.

"I guess. I was just thinking..." And she couldn't really bring herself to say where her thoughts had brought her next because it would rip this moment and its strange peace apart at the seams. _Thinking I would want to show you those things._ She laughed again and shook her head. "Never mind. My brain is kind of all over the place."

"As is mine," he said, rethreading his fingers through hers and turning to face the front window of the car. She watched the moving lights lace their way through his black eyes.

"To be honest," she said, bringing her voice back to joke level, "I was trying not to think about how we just fucked in a _hospital_ elevator..."

He looked over at her again, a smile quirking up a corner of his mouth. "I know for a fact that's not the strangest place you've--"

"Finish that sentence and lose your fingers, Krios."

She was fighting laughter, trying to look pissed and probably failing. 

"Before you go back to the Normandy looking for someone to punch, it was you who told me." His black eyes were still sparkling, both with city lights and laugher.

"M--Oh."

 _Ohhh._ There had been a night where she'd been more drunk than she'd been since...well...it had been a long time... They'd been docked on Omega and she had been out with Kasumi and Garrus and Tali, of all people, and she had come back to the ship just as Thane was returning from visiting an old contact. If her memory served her--and it didn't particularly well--she had felt Kasumi's smirk as she watched Shepard lean into Thane, partly because her inhibitions were nonexistent, and partly because he had held out his arm for her to grab onto as she swayed in place. The three of them had stayed about fifty feet behind, ensuring they were not on the same lift up to the Normandy's airlock.

The last thing she remembered from that night before the fuzz started to become impenetrable was feeling the rush of being so close to him. Both of them breathing hard from laughing, each set of eyes raking the others' for...what...permission? Permission to move, permission to touch.

"Have I embarrassed you?"

She let her laughter go and quickly said "No, no...I was just trying to weed through and remember what I might have said. On the countertop in the galley of the first Normandy?"

Thane chuckled and said, "Not the time you spoke of, but I'm tempted to let you keep guessing if they're all going to be as amusing as that..."

She snorted and kicked sideways at him. "Hilarious. Well, I can say one thing...I've never done it somewhere more likely to have about five security cameras recording the whole thing."

 _That_ was a horrifying idea. It hadn't occurred to her until the words left her mouth but she shuddered to think of some asshole getting off--or getting paid--on their little scene. It must have showed on her face because he cocked his head at her, really concerned now.

"Well, if the universe doesn't end, they can start right in again with a real doozy of a scandal."

"Ah yes. **_"Reinstated Commander Shepard Caught on Security Vid With Now-Deceased Lizard Assassin.'"_**

She looked over at him, feeling her brows knit together and fingers tighten around his hand. The mood in the tiny cockpit of the skycar had shifted, and the barrier that had been broken through in the hospital lounge had sprung up again. Suddenly their bantering about sex scandals and gossip columns seemed so _not_ funny she nearly cringed.

"I--"

"That is the right word? Lizard?"

"Thane..."

It gnawed at her to think he'd been seeing those idiots spewing their cruel comparisons and petty biases.

The gossip articles about her had adopted a decidedly xenophobic tone, taking every opportunity to mention that she'd once been romantically linked to a tall, beautiful decorated Alliance officer with fifteen years of flawless service under his belt, and now she was slumming it with a reptilian bottom feeder. Her personal favorite had been **_"Has Commander Shepard, now 31 and rumored to be involved with a drell, reached a quarter-life crisis where she feels the need to show the galaxy evidence her boundless tolerance?"_**

She'd even wondered more than once if the Illusive Man had had something to do with leaking a few tidbits in their direction. 

At the time they'd started, she brushed them off, but now...she realized that she _did_ care. Not so much about what they said about her--they were always going to crucify her at every opportunity--but the thought that they felt they had the right to say anything about this man, who had pulled half of the Normandy crew--inches from being smelted alive--from Collector pods. This man, who had sat with the broken survivors of Ronald Taylor's little cult, speaking softly to them of beautiful nonsense while they waited for medical aid to find them. Shepard and Jacob had been so shaken by the whole thing that both of them were at a loss. This man, who had so carefully removed the speculums from David Archer's eyes after they'd released him. This man, who she knew so well and held so close to her heart.

She clenched the fist that wasn't holding his hand so tightly she felt her nails start to dig into the skin.

"I...please forgive me, Siha. This isn't the time."

The look on his face now reminded her of how it had looked on the elevator after he'd whispered a string of words she'd not understood, but got the gist of fairly well. In the liquid heat that had been those words, he'd indulged in a bit of what he'd seen as selfishness or jealousy or something he would have put in the category of emotions that he felt--or wanted to feel--were squarely beneath him.

It was so easy to think of Thane as bulletproof. Calm and collected, compassionate to a fault but so fierce in his quiet way, at peace with his past and accepting of his future. But she knew he was fighting against every minute, and how deeply the fear of this old man's death he was now heading toward at a fast trot ran within him. She knew the few thick veins of pride and possessiveness that ran through him, which, before he'd come face-to-face with the reality of Kaidan, had mostly been leveled only at time itself when it came to her and 'them', since they had such a limited supply of it.

Thinking of those nights with him in her bed, she sometimes thought she might have guarded those moments against both time and Kaidan more jealously than he had...

"There's nothing to forgive, Thane. Jesus. I'm the one who should be sorry."

"For what?"

The long breath she let out had a very obvious tremor in it, and she was having trouble keeping the tears in check. "For you. For Kaidan. Not _for_ him. Well, yes for him. He's in there because of me. I mean I'm sorry this had to happen now. I'm sorry for whatever he said to you because whatever it is, it's because of how I've acted."

Thane smiled a thin little smile and squeezed her fingers, which were already pretty vice-like around his.

"Would it make you feel better if I told you that I'm equally envious of anyone who will continue to know you as you live out your life? That it could have been your mother I met and I would have been just as troubled?"

"Would it make _you_ feel better if I called you a big fat liar?"

He laughed softly, still gripping her hand. "You know something, Mariah? What darkened my mood the most about meeting him was that I wanted, with every molecule of my soul, to act as I once would have. To meet a man who had treated one I loved so poorly...as a young man...a foolish, jealous young man...I would have raged at him, tried to frighten him away..."

He paused, and seemed to be struggling to find the right words. A rarity for him.

"But the thought that consumed me as he spoke of you, I assume without knowing who I was, was that he was going to get out of that bed eventually. That you'll continue working together, and probably make amends. No--"

He shook his head as she opened her mouth to interrupt him, "Let me finish. I wanted to act the jealous lover, I wanted to claim you for myself." Here he smiled again. "I wanted to have the inevitable argument with you about it in the not-too-distant future. But..."

He swallowed, shaking his head again, but not at her. "But I'm not that young man any longer. I'm ashamed of him when he seeps through. In the Hospital lounge. The elevator. A few moments ago...now. There are so many other things I want to speak with you about. Your Earth things."

She nodded. It would have been stupid to contradict him. Living on borrowed time was something she understood...and even with that soldier's acceptance of death, it made those those moments, those very universal and unbidden moments of childishness, anger, pettiness seem so much more wasteful once you were past the initial outburst. And to have a relatively specific end date looming made the regret even worse. She looked into his eyes, and resigned herself to the fall of the hot tears down her cheeks.

"It's not selfish to not want to die, Thane. It's not selfish to expect those fucking assholes not to treat Drell like you're taller, slightly smarter varren. Or to..."

She didn't know how to address the thing about Kaidan. So she settled on "Or to want more time."

He let out a little murmur of something...it could have been laughter, but nothing about it was funny. "As always you assume the best in me. You assume that my anger toward those articles is about pride in my species..."

She waited, but he didn't finish. He looked down at their hands, still knotted together, and exhaled slowly. Shaking herself out of her own moment of indulgent angst, she took her other hand and brought it up under his chin, so that his eyes flicked back up to hers. "No time for that." 

"Mariah..." And before he said anything else, she moved toward him, sitting on his lap and curling into him like they were teenagers sitting on a sofa in a darkened room. She rested her head on his shoulder and let the tears flow freely. He brought his hand up to the back of her neck and kneaded at the muscles, as though trying to work out some of the tension he found there.  

"I suppose what I'm most sorry for is ending the conversation about strange sexual encounters." 

She snorted into his shoulder, still crying, but that barrier was weakening again. 

"Well apart from my first time with you..." 

He made a motion as if to push her off him in indignation, but caught her at the last moment and she clung back to him, inhaling the smell of his well-worn leather coat and actually laughing this time. 

"The only thing strange about it was your thinking I would find your body unpleasant." 

She looked down into his face and smiled into his eyes. Thinking about how uncharacteristically self-conscious she'd felt of her slightly uneven breasts, her thick, muscular thighs and torso, not because she didn't think she was attractive, but because she knew he'd never been with a human before. Thinking of how his breath had caught when he'd run his hands over her the first time, and watched her arch into his touch...  

"You have to admit, trying to figure out how another species works is just all kinds of bizarre."

"We've managed, I think." 

"We have." 

And they sat there, so awkwardly placed on the small seat of the skycar, not speaking, watching the endless weaving and unweaving of the Citadel traffic. So many things left unspoken which would probably stay that way. 

As the sky car reached the wards, and began to slow, Thane asked, "Mariah?" 

"Hm?"

"I wish we had more time." 

"Me too. See? that wasn't so hard to admit."

"I've seen so much of the galaxy, enough to make me want to see so much more, but...with you I would stay here for the next fifty years. Choose art for the walls.  Learn to cook food that wasn't going to poison one another."

Coming from someone--anyone--else, that fantasy would have irritated her. But she knew what he really meant. 

"You've seen me try to cook. How well do you think that would go?" 

His arms tightened around her, and it seemed--or maybe she was just imagining--that he was trying to apologize again with the pressure. She wondered how long he'd held that wish inside of him. She held him back, trying just as hard to tell him she felt the exact same way. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh, I know. I didn't think it would get quite this maudlin. There are just so many things I want them to say to each other before the end. 
> 
> Thank you all so much for sticking with me and for your kudos and bookmarks even though it takes me forever to post.


	6. Chapter 6

They walked into the dark apartment still holding hands. They hadn't let go of each other since entering the skycar about forty minutes ago. It was so easy to imagine they were just regular people, back from a date on the Citadel, burning for tongues in mouths, hands on hot, bare skin. The place smelled like dust and...

"Actual paper books?" She asked him as she stood and let her eyes adjust to the darkness, inhaling and remembering the long-ago scent of 'books.' Her Grandfather's study. She stifled a smile at the thought of telling Thane how much he actually reminded her of her grandfather from time to time.

"My power service seems to have been disconnected," Thane murmured, waving a hand in front of the light sensor on the wall. 

Shepard laughed, and kissed the side of his face and asked "Do you happen to have a drawer full of candles we could light and stand in little clusters all over the place?"

He raised a brow ridge at her--something he hadn't really done to convey it's usual 'human' meaning until he started spending time with her--clearly not understanding the (admittedly weak) porn/soap opera joke. 

"We hardly need them," he said, turning to meet her lips with his as she grinned, so, so grateful that the despair had lifted for the time being. 

They stood there, the door open, tasting each others' mouths, sharing the same breath back and forth for an immeasurable length of time. The orange, yellow and white lights of the Upper Wards shone through the curtained windows casting a soft glint on his green and pink skin and a glare off his onyx eyes. She wanted to make a joke about being able to see a beautiful, clear reflection of herself in them, but to break away from his mouth may have caused her physical pain if she'd tried to do it.

After a few minutes, he was the one who broke away, trailing his hand down her throat and deftly undid the first buckle of her fatigues. The heat began to rise in her chest so high that she almost couldn't breathe.

"Mariah."

His lips a half centimeter from hers, he whispered her name, over and over and over again as he worked her out of her top so that the bare skin of her shoulders and chest were exposed to the cool, dry air in the apartment. Her fingers worked at the buckles of his coat, and again, she felt an oft-used little quip about how needlessly complicated he was to get out his clothing rise in her but bit it back, wanting to savor the sound of their breathing, scattered with light gasps and moans in the near-perfect silence.

Finally, her hands found his skin.

She pushed away his coat, letting the light scrape of his scales tickle her palms and fingertips, and she traced the lines of the markings that ran long his ribs. She brought her mouth to the side of his neck, right where the velvet-ruby ridges met smooth green scales. She sucked hard, and he _moaned_  as he arched his head back, both sets of his eyelids closing.

She kept her tongue on his skin until she tasted the bitter tang of the secretion referred to as 'venom' throughout the stack of articles Mordin had given her to peruse. Thane had been wary of it at first, unsure of what its effect might be on a human, but she'd found that the way it heightened her senses just a hair, and how it made his jewel-bright skin seem even more brilliant turned her on more than it probably should have.  

It was worth the little twinges of a headache she'd had on the days after they'd spend the night together. Reaching out she found the door switch and the second it whirred closed, she'd pushed him up against it, her mouth still tracing a lazy pattern over his collarbones, dodging the silver necklace he always wore.

He'd told her once it was a token from his Hanar mentor, but there had been something about the way he said it...no story, no explanation. The lack of his usual flash of memory (or him sharing it at least) more or less convinced her that it had either belonged to or been given to him by Irikah. It had been the only thing, as far as she could tell, that he'd lied to her about. She didn't mind, really. Some things were his and some were hers, and that was the way it always was.

Unfastening his vest, she pulled it off of him. When she fingered the high waistband of his pants he caught her hands and brought them up to his face. Her thumbs brushed over his frill and the tiny vibrations she felt when she stroked the rest of her fingers along the rows of cartilage beneath them told her she was finding the right places. His eyes were closed again, and when she pushed her hips up against his, she felt his clothed cock give a few distinct twitches.

He ran his hands up her arms, over her shoulders and down her back to unhook her bra. She felt a little sigh escape her as the tension of the garment relax. He opened his eyes again and smiled at her. He always found the delight that followed the removal of her bra, even if she was only her removing it herself before going to sleep, incredibly amusing.

"Ah hah hah I know...I'm Commander Shepard and why the hell am I wearing this thing around my chest if I don't want to..."

She'd taken her hands away from his face as she spoke, and the way he leaned back into her touch after she let the bra fall to the floor, still trilling the soft sound from deep in his throat, brought a rush to her cunt that drenched it through. It was not often she had him so far gone he couldn't be bothered to answer her smart-ass comments, and it made her ache.

He saved her the trouble of having to figure out how to undo his pants by divesting himself completely in two swift movements, not taking his face away from her hands.

Christ, she'd missed this man. At the hospital, it had been so fast, so sharp and needy...there had been no time for the slow rediscovery of secret places, of savoring the thing she'd imagined a thousand times over in the time they'd been apart. It had gotten to the point where she had only allowed herself to imagine it when she woke late in the night, as far away from contact with anyone else as possible. 

It was enough to make her want to cry again, but she stoppered the tears by bringing her lips to his forehead. She trailed them over his closed eyelids and down his cheeks, savoring every single hiss and murmur he let slip out. She bit at his neck again in the same spot and felt his chuckle with her mouth and her cunt clenched, longing for a touch. She started to bring her own hand down, but his beat her there, and he pressed hard against her with his fingers and the sound she heard from herself was high and needy.

It was only a brief thing, a momentary relief before she slid her mouth down his chest and stomach. He was craning to meet the touch of her lips with his cock, but she moved her mouth in the opposite direction. She found the little spot where the skin, paler, softer and more delicate here than the rough scales of his back and shoulders, was pulled taut between the bone of his hip and his groin. He actually hissed _shit_ when her teeth connected, and she grinned against his skin, thrilled to the point of giddiness that she could still push him to human curses. He reached down and took his cock in his hand and brought it to her mouth as she knelt in front of him, running the head over her lips, humming a little whenever she flicked her tongue out to meet it.

He knew she liked this little game, the expectation, the guessing of when he would--

 _Fuck._ Without any sort of warning, he thrust forward into her mouth, hitting the back of her throat and she reached down into her pants to...

...yes, there...

She pushed her fingers into herself and moaned loudly around him, and louder still when she felt his fingers snarl in her hair as he started a shallow rhythm, letting the words she didn't need to understand pour out of his mouth as he did. Months ago, when the amount of time before them seemed now like the most indulgent luxury, this would have been enough. Him fucking her mouth, her fingering herself until she couldn't breathe anymore and then stroking him with her hand until he spurted trails of clear tangy liquid over her lips and chin as they watched each other. 

He'd looked at her curiously when she described this particular thing she'd always liked, and she'd loved the unselfconscious way he had allowed himself to get lost in it, untroubled by human preconceptions of it being degrading for her, allowing her to make love to him in this way, to shatter him with just the feel of her mouth and hands.

Tonight it wasn't enough. Wiggling out of her pants, she stepped out of them and kicked them away. She felt a trickle of wetness fall down her thigh. 

_Jesus, she needed him._

"You're--" he started, but she stopped his mouth with hers before he could get any farther. 

Pushing on his shoulders, she led him downwards, so he was sitting with his back against the door, legs out in front of him. She straddled his thighs, and neither of them tried to muffle their shouts when her dripping cunt caught him and she sank down, letting him feel the give of every single muscle inside of her. As she let herself adjust to the stretch, his moan drew out as though it wanted to shape itself into words but couldn't find the way to make them. Hands still on his shoulders, she rested her cheek near the top of his head as he wrapped his arms around her torso, letting his fingertips dig into her sides as he fought to keep his breathing steady. 

For the first time since cutting it, she wished that she still had her long hair. She knew how much he liked the feel of it on his face when they sat like this.

The sound of his ragged breathing made her draw back, suddenly, holding back the little moan as he shifted inside her. "Thane..."

"I will not break, Mariah."

"Your lungs might," she whispered, brushing a thumb over his cheek as she looked down at him, biting the inside of her lip. She was thinking of the way he'd been so very careful to keep his breathing even in the elevator, even as he drove into her with such power.

"A small price to pay," he said, as he thrust his hips up, so that the tip of his cock hit her just...

"Oh, _fuck_...."

She arched her back, and he caught a nipple in his mouth and pulled it in hard. She _reveled_ in how much he loved her nipples in the same fascinated way he loved her clit.

He'd told her that the pleasurable nerves were internal in drell women, and being able to see the little nubs of flesh flush, harden and throb under his ministrations was 'intoxicating.' She smiled as she thought the memory in the same words he'd used, and watched his lips-- _those lips_ \--close around her other nipple and she cursed again, so loudly that she felt silly and covered her mouth with a shaking hand.

He reached up and caught her hand, leading it down between her legs because he knew she needed it. Releasing her nipple, he rested his forehead against her breastbone and looked down to watch her stroke herself. He rolled his hips and they fell into a bit of a clumsy rhythm, but it worked. _Oh,_ it worked.

He was biting her nipple again and she was...god she was so close...the blunted nails of the hand that wasn't on her cunt dug into his shoulder and he hissed when she felt one of them dig between two of the large scales.

"Be as loud as you wish," he said against her skin, and she loved that he could feel how near she was to falling apart, and even though he wasn't close himself, he cried out nearly as loudly as she did when she came, convulsing around her hand and his cock. Her stomach still fluttering with the aftershocks, she shifted and started fucking him against the door as hard as she dared, and he was whispering to her again, Drell words and sounds she didn't understand, interspersed with, " _Siha_ " and "harder."

He needed more purchase so she planted her knees so he could drive up into her as he held her hips steady, guiding her to where he needed her.

It still wasn't enough. She shifted back so her shoulders were resting on the floor (was it actual, real hardwood?) and he rose to kneel between her legs. As she sprawled out in front of him and lifted her hips, he ran a hand from her throat down to her stomach, and finally slid his fused middle fingers into her, feeling how well stretched she was from him and humming with approval as she hissed and arched even higher.

"So smug," she said, grinning and she moved her own fingers down to where his disappeared into her and then brought it to his mouth so he could taste her.

"You're doing very little to put me in my place." 

She gave a startled laugh and said "Oh, just wait..."

He chuckled, knowing damn well that her "putting him in his place" was a game she couldn't win without him throwing it.

She scooted closer to him, laughing because she felt ridiculous crab-walking on her elbows and feet. He rubbed his cock against her, teasing, pushing halfway in, withdrawing, taking his time, savoring the sweet anticipation of the re-entry. She was beyond 'fuck me' or any of the other usual things, and when he finally slid all the way into her, testing the angle, he hooked his arms under her knees, spreading her wider, letting him slip just that much deeper. 

She gazed up at him as he shivered and then started moving with those same measured strokes he had earlier. The lights from the window caught his skin, eyes and lips and she was unable to give any words to the things she felt. Laying out in front of him like this, arms thrown over her head, exposed, open, completely willing to give him what he needed because he didn't need to ask for it...

No. There really weren't words. Not good ones anyway. She closed her eyes, letting the strength and depth of his thrusts wash over her, listening for the shift in his voice that meant he was close. She'd always been loud, and it was delicious to her that he was as well. 

"I want..." he said, and he shifted his arm from underneath her knee so he could bring a hand up to her aching clit. "Open your eyes, Riah. Please..."

He was moving just a little faster now, rolling his hips a bit every now and again, and she knew he was trying to make her come again.

"I don't...think I can"

"You can. Come for me... _break_ for me."

He thrummed her with his fingers as he moved, and for fuck's sake he knew _every..._ little...

Not giving a damn about the ache that had crept into her shoulders as she held most of her weight on them, she locked her ankles around his waist and dug her fingernails uselessly against the hard finish of the floor, feeling the muscles in his thighs and ass clenching and relaxing as he moved, again just a little faster, and from the way she felt his legs shaking she could tell he was nearly at his breaking point.

" _Breathe"_  she whispered, as she saw him lose the rhythm of inhaling and exhaling as he rode his climax higher. The corners of his mouth quirked up, and he brought a hand down to the side of her face, running his thumb along her cheek as he watched her. She felt her throat constrict at the painfully tender gesture and turned to kiss his palm before he brought it back to support her hips. 

She was surprised to find herself close again, the sounds of their voices in the quiet room, of his thighs slapping against the backs of her own and thought of him coming inside her again bringing her closer still.

"I need to see... _pl_ _ease_ , Mariah." 

Eyes still firmly fixed on hers, his rhythm stuttered and his hand stopped moving on her clit. She bit back the cry of "don't stop" mostly because it was stupid but partly because she was so lost in watching him. Every muscle in his body was taut as drum as he slammed himself into her so hard she knew there would be bruises and she would bear every single one of them proudly as marks of this beautiful, frightening, _blinding_ moment. Needing something to hold, she grabbed a handful of her own hair, keening, straining every muscle in her body toward the orgasm that was just out of her reach. 

She saw the glint of his eyes as the huge dark irises, round catseye disks in the pools of liquid black, contracted and he let out a sound that had traces of his familiar cry but it was threaded through with something she'd never heard. She felt the wet heat spread inside her and  _oh, God,_ the thought that in another world it could mean he just put his child into her and she was flying apart, only the second time in her entire life coming without fingers on her clit and it made _so much sense_ because it was Thane and he was...

... _Fuck_ he was still watching her as she sobbed and thrashed beneath him and she knew he was committing every single millisecond to his perfect memory. 

Her own gasping breaths rang in her ears as she shuddered, and he held her in place so that they could enjoy the descent this time, finally letting his eyes close as she rippled around him at longer and longer intervals. He relaxed and fell backward onto his heels, trying to be gentle about lowering her hips. He slipped out of her and he absently brought a hand to the swollen mess her cunt had undoubtedly become and sighed at the feeling of his spend flowing out of her. 

She reached up and covered her face with her hands as she came down, actually shaking with adrenaline and fatigue. Her mind and soul felt flayed raw from the sheer force of what had just happened. She wondered if she was going to cry...something that biology or genes or some other cruelty of nature had made way too easy for her in moments of vulnerability. And this...

"Riah, I..." 

"Shhh..." She said through her hands. "Not ready for real yet." 

He chuckled softly, and ran his hands along her thighs softly, letting her be for a moment as her heart rate returned to something closer to its normal speed.

Parting her fingers and looking up at him she said, "You're pretty goddamn pleased with yourself right now, aren't you?" 

He laughed, louder this time, and moved his legs back so around he was sitting cross legged again, grunting with the adjustment. Settling his back against the door, he cocked his head and stared down at her and exhaled, one hand still resting on her thigh. He seemed to me maneuvering around the ragged breaks in the exhalation, and the idea that he was trying to shield her from seeing how sick he really was, and had been shielding her for most of the last two hours nearly broke her.

"Would it irritate you if I told you that the way you're laying brings to mind the work of a human painter I once saw on Ilium?" 

"Depends on which painter," she said, moving her hands away from her face to lace her fingers across her stomach. 

He ran his hand up her side and over her stomach and then back down, smiling. 

"You've heard of Picasso?" 

She swatted at him, and then brought her hands up to cup her uneven breasts, "I don't doubt it when you look at these--"

"Now you're the one who will lose fingers if you finish your sentence," he said, grabbing her hands and moving them away. "I was thinking of a woman...Gentileschi, I believe her name was. _The Sleeping Venus..."_

He trailed off as his eyes moved far away with the memory. She waited for him to start voicing the fractured images that she knew were blocking out the dark apartment before his eyes, but if they came, he kept them quiet. 

She pictured him in a Baroque painting, finding the image that came to her not altogether out of place and definitely not unpleasent. His slender, graceful form and pearly emerald scales seemed made for chiaroscuro. She'd seen a lot of paintings when her father had taken her to Italy years ago, and bratty twelve-year-old that she was at the time, she'd been bored out of her skull.

Laying here in the darkness, fighting but losing against the languid contentment that would make leaving this place harder-- _so_ much harder _\--_ she wondered what seeing those old things..."Earth Things" as Thane had put it...would be like now. With him.

She sat up, and the wood on the floor was cool against her bottom as she moved to sit next to him. She twined her arms around his neck and they sat for a moment, each lost in memories and pointless fancies that would probably never be shared, because it would take too much fucking time.... No. No no _no_...

"You know what they usually have in those paintings? Beds. Soft beds with pillows and blankets..."

He let out a little huff of laughter and moved to stand up. She lifted her hand for him to grab so she could pull herself to her feet. She overshot the pull a bit and stumbled on legs that had long-since fallen asleep. He steadied her, as he had on that night so long ago on Omega.

Unlike that night, she leaned forward so he could put his arms around her, holding her in the darkness. 

Oh, this was so dangerous.

She understood now why he'd been so hesitant to leave the hospital and bring her here. She'd let him delay, let him work through the solution in his mind as they'd both pretended that the crazy sex a public elevator was nothing more than fulfilling a little fantasy they'd joked about from time to time. Truth be told, she would have been all right with any time they could have stolen, there or anywhere. But in that sterile hospital, she wanted nothing more than to be with him somewhere else, somewhere _his._

But now that they were here, and he was breathing into the crook of her neck, she could see how much easier it was going to be to pretend here. To forget.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you'll notice I extended my chapter count to add one more. I just can't move away from these two. 
> 
> <3


	7. Chapter 7

His sheets still smelled the same. Part of him had imagined that they would have somehow become less familiar in the weeks he'd been away. But no.

She still smelled the same as she always had after sex. Sweat and heat and that little hint of almond on her skin and in her hair.

He held her, staring into the darkness of his bedroom and listening to her breathing begin to slow against his neck as she dozed in the wake of climaxing again beneath his tongue. He'd parted her, stroked and flicked until she was sighing and begging, trying (probably in vain) to show her what she was to him.

Perhaps trying to make sure she remembered?

Turning from that thought and running as fast as he could, he brought his mouth and nose to her hair, inhaling deeply and carefully, savoring the melding of her scent with the smell of his sheets. Two things that had lingered, perfect and clear in his diamond memory. Two things he'd barely let himself dream about ever occupying the same space as he'd lain alone for so many nights, remembering...

_A fingertip brushed against a bottom lip, an ailing body jolted back to life with a shiver and a a bolt of heat shot right through to the bone marrow, tongue longing  to taste the skin, the breach in decades-old defenses chipping wider and wider..._

"I thought I'd lost my mind." 

He closed his eyes briefly, biting back the rest of the memory flash he'd not been aware he was speaking aloud. Her voice was quiet, soft, so hushed and so strong at the same time, so  _her_. Just the  _her_ she let so few see. "But now I think maybe that was when I finally found it again."

He glanced down at her. Her pale eyes reflected the Citadel lights and were far, far away. 

They didn't speak for a long while, and he joined her in staring out the window, over the Wards. As he often did during these times, he found himself idly wishing for a warm night breeze, or the rhythm of falling rain on a roof, something other than the garish lights and the artificial sky. It was a fancy mostly for himself, he knew, because she'd grown up in space, cold metal under her feet and filtered air in her lungs. 

"Can I ask what you're thinking?"

"If you wish,  _Siha._ "

She turned her head and rested her chin on his chest, looking up at him and waiting for him to speak. 

He  _hmmed_ and bent to kiss her nose, then each cheek, then her lips. His mouth quirked up as he remembered her casually asking so long ago in a seedy club on Illium if Drell kissed as humans did, and the look on her face (and the knowing eye rolls of Joker and Kasumi) as he'd told her yes, but they concentrated equal attention on all of the senses during lovemaking, so there was more touching, more tasting and smelling. 

He was grateful for the happy memory, and that it had come at that moment so he could share that in answer to her question rather than his musings on things he was unlikely to feel or hear again. 

She snorted after he finished speaking, and then repositioned herself more comfortably on the pillows, smiling and pushing her hair back off her face. "I wondered if you could sense how turned on I was from listening to you say that." 

"I knew what I was doing, _Siha._ But I didn't need to sense it. It was written all across your face." 

She flushed slightly, as he ran the pads of his middle fingers from one side of her face to the other, temple to temple, running over the bridge of her nose, the gesture he'd adopted to acknowledge the genuine pleasure he took in how open she was with her expressions. 

She shook her head, and moved in and bit his bottom lip softly, and, as always, it made him sigh in pleasure. From his lip, she moved down, trailing her lips across  the skin of his chest and stomach, incorporating little nips that made him shiver. He could feel her inhaling his scent, as he always did hers, knowing that her human sense of smell would only be able to detect the barest fraction of his arousal. 

"Mariah," he whispered, and the word was broken by a moan as he felt her mouth hovering over his groin, and the hiss that slipped out of him as he felt the tip of her tongue on him, and knew she was tasting the mingling of their two bodies, was nothing but raw surprise and wanting. 

She laced the fingers of one hand with his at his side, and used the other to stroke him softly. He thought of how she'd knelt before him a short time ago, taking him deep,  _so deep..._

 _"Siha_ ," and in another time, in another life, he would have liked nothing more than to bring his hand down and tangle it in her hair as she took him, guiding her to what and where he wanted, playing at roughness and possession, both of them discovering new ways to give and receive pleasure. Instead he gripped her shoulder, almost desperately, and as her eyes met his, they closed and she stopped, bringing herself up to hide her face against his neck. 

He understood. She'd done what he'd been so terrified of letting himself do: forget. Forget that there would be no dozing off, exhausted from their reunion. Forget that they were not in her bed on the Normandy. Forget that his cursed body was probably unable to handle much more. 

"I'm sorry." 

"No apologies,  _Siha_ ," he said into her hair as his arms circled her and he held her tightly. 

They were quiet for a few minutes, before she said "I don't know what we should be doing right now," and there was a hint of her typical pragmatism in the way she said it. Always the leader, always the soldier. Trying to work out solutions. The right ones. Always unable to accept it when there were none to be had. 

"Well," he started slowly, trying to will himself into believing there was a right thing to say or do in their situation, "What would you be doing the night before a suicide mission you knew was doomed to fail?" 

 

She smiled, and tried to hide the motion she made to clear the wetness from her eyes. "The last time I went on one of those, I had wild sex with an old Drell assassin." 

"And I believe you pleased him greatly." 

_Be alive with me tonight._

"Christ, did I really say that?" she said, the pink returning to her cheeks as the unbidden words escaped him again. 

He smiled as she repositioned herself again, making herself comfortable. He didn't often thank the gods for such trivial things, as he felt her settle next to him, he was certain he'd never been more grateful for anything than he was for the turn their conversation had taken, for it was  _this_ that made him wonder how such a life as his deserved to end in the presence of such a woman.

 _This_ is what they had really done during the few hours they'd stolen before going through the Omega 4 relay, so often relived in his memory. After the wildness, the physical need to claim, to make each other feel so intensely that they forgot everything but lips and hands and tongues and teeth, after the alternating waves of despair and desperate optimism, they'd simply  _been._ They'd accepted that they would never get enough, and spoken to each other of small nothings, some of them achingly sad, some humorous, others beautiful and far away. 

It was something he'd not needed to do with Irikah, and not for the first time, he wondered if, in the vast fabric of the universe, his time with Mariah Shepard had meant more to him...

Well, he supposed it didn't matter much. 

In the same moment, he silently thanked his gods and cursed them. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And it ends. Sniffle. 
> 
> I have more planned, mostly because I would love to flesh them out a bit more, and explore the beginning of their relationship, and delve into to what it was like when they were both much harder people. I feel like I plopped ya'll into the middle/end of my headcanon with these two, and their relationship was already so established. I may turn this into a series. Less angst, more action, probably. We'll see :) 
> 
> Anyway THANK YOU all for sticking with me while my life makes it impossible for me to update any where near as regularly as I would like. xoxo


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